Thursday, July 15, 2010

My thoughts on the new trees:

In a word UNFINISHED. In another, UNTOUCHED!

Long version:

Honestly seems like they just threw druids away for later because they did not know what they wanted to do. Take ferocity and furor for example, are they increasing the ability cost across the board because right off the bat everything now costs 2 extra rage and energy, and they finally give in and give me a 3 point furor AND IT STILL is 60% chance, my personal record is 10 consecutive shifts without a rage proc (either that or they just removed ranks 4 and 5 and did not update the first 3, for both the ones I mentioned)

I am so upset at how bad these are, and without even having looked at the other classes (besides druid and prot warrior) I doubt there is but 1 maybe 2 trees as bad and unfinished as our feral tree. Everything I am about to right will probably have been for nothing by the time the next patch comes out (read as: 100% overhaul of feral).

Cat: http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#0ZGcbubRrMMhobh NOW WHAT! there are simply not enough points to use 41 points as a cat.Bear: http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#0ZGbrzfR0Rbu -> http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#0ZGdrzfR0RbuoMI -> http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#0ZGfrzfR0RbuoMI where is out field dressing in either the first or second tier of resto, where is our imp LOTP = Blood craze? So because we have 2 roles in our tree we get nothing but boring non-interactive talents? No, my thoughts are still feral has been completely untouched and anything that had more than 3 ranks just had the last 2 removed and made to look nice so they could release something.

First tier:

See above, but 2 forced points are completely useless to bears (and while great for pvp cats, in pve unless after the first 10 seconds of a boss fight), and the other 3 are only marginally useful for both cat and bear.

Second tier:

Primal fury: Double cp on cat crits removed, This is going to be very detrimental to rotations, although maybe this is what they want, this would turn FB into a true finisher that you would only ever use if you did not have to use rip (see nomnomnom). Depending on rage, we may skip this as bears, but probably not.

Feral Swiftness: 30% is so fast, I am surprised it is still that high (see pursuit of justice). As for the dodge, again I am surprised that is not part of the bear "you get free stuff for picking feral." More on this later (see natural reaction).

Fury swipes: cat white attacks made up suck a small portion of damage compared to other melee, and even with haste effecting energy it was still not a great stat. This will help make haste a competitive stat. Does this swing give rage for bears? Either way with haste effecting rage, more threat is more threat, simply a matter of will we have room for it.

Infected wounds: ravage has been added to applying it.

Third Tier:

(Imp) feral charge: see below

KOTJ: depends on the implementation of enrage. If the armor reduction is not removed, this is worthless for bears, if it is, this is better than imp feral charge.

Fourth Tier:

Imp LOTP: it appears to be missing ...

Skull Bash: Well this is one way to force us to take it, put in in the tier that has even with it a max of 3 points a bear would want.

Fifth Tier:

Natural Reaction: Again, I am surprised this is still there. My suggestion, remove this talent, and role the rage on dodge into feral swiftness, and remove the dodge from both and place it on the mastery

Endless carnage: Picking it because I expect the numbers to be tweaked and pulverize actually worth hitting, because right now there is no reason to.

Primal Madness: see above, although if enrage is no longer a second shield wall, and losses the armor reduction, when we hit it it will be because we want rage, and this would make it more effective in the role it is supposed to play. Unfortunately it is a role that is not needed making the talent lackluster. Cats will only get this because they have nothing else.

Sixth Tier: Again only 4 points a bear would even want.

Rend and Tear: see above about talent ranks and reduced effectiveness. It is nice they reduced maul but I still think this should not effect maul at all but rather give a bonus to mangle.

Pulverize: Wait and See.

Seventh Tier:

Berserk: Only because there is nothing else to get with only 1 point unless I want cat only talents.

Resto: I expected as much, of the 4 tank classes we have by far the weakest sub-secs (frost/unholy, ret, arms/fury). I expect resto to get a field dressing like talent. Only having 3 points to pick as a bear in the first tier of resto is utterly unacceptable.

P.S. I wrote this at 5 in the morning because I could not sleep, please ignore the ramblings and QQ, I know stuff is going to change DRASTICALLY, and I like this post to be a predictions/see how far they came when live comes post.

4 comments:

In the druid talent trees, for any talent where they shaved 2 or 3 points off the talent, they didn't adjust the values at all to what they need to be. Also, we probably still get the full effect on the beta server anyway, since we're still benefiting from talents that aren't there anymore. So, don't trust the current values on talents. Assume they will keep their full potency one way or another.

Something in the code prevents the deletion of talents when the talent ID is removed. But if the talent ID is still in the game, anything done to it will update (simple solution instead of deleting talents in the code simply set all talents to be deleted to 0 but I guess they thought of that)